


Certain Points of View

by orphan_account



Series: Marginalia [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, dubious parenting, references to past character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5727748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's power in a good, solid lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Certain Points of View

The first thing Hondo teaches Katooni is how to lie.

 

“You are not a Jedi now, my girl,” he tells her, shaking a spanner for emphasis. “You are Jalla Kelan, an orphan working on my ship for credits. Remember this.”

 

Katooni can hardly _forget_. She spends her nights with eyes squeezed shut, trying desperately to sleep. Instead, all she can see is that narrow alleyway, and the scrape-rattle of the clone trooper’s armor as he tried to push through it after her. Petro had told her to run, and she had, like a coward. She’d run away, and left him there, and she _knew_ what had happened to him then. She’d _felt_ it, a rattling blow to her head, a stabbing pain in her bones. 

 

She’d like to be Jalla Kelan. Jalla Kelan is an orphan from Coronet City. She ran away from the foster home when the boss-lady beat her one too many times. Hondo Ohnaka saw potential in her pickpocketing skills and took her on as an apprentice. It’s a good, anonymous, unimportant life, with no dead friends and murdered Jedi. Katooni thinks that Jalla Kelan wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping.

 

Hondo finds her in the galley every night, sure as sure. He heats up a saucepan of blue milk and hands it to her. Katooni hates blue milk. She drinks it anyway.

 

At some point, she always falls asleep. She wakes up back in her bunk, the thin blankets tugged up to her ears. Hondo never mentions it. She never asks.

 

“What’s your name?” he asks her on this particular morning, as they skim over Lothal’s golden fields. It’s the same question every morning, the only ritual Katooni has left.

 

“Jalla Kelan,” she says dutifully. “I’m eleven standard years old. My parents are dead. I’m your apprentice.”

 

“Well,” Hondo laughs, returning to the ship’s controls. “The last part is true enough.”

 

Katooni cracks a smile. It feels strange on her face. Hondo gives her a sideways glance and grins too. It’s a surprisingly nice expression for a pirate.

 

“Today, lockpicking,” he announces. “And lying, naturally.”

 

“Yeah,” Katooni says. “Naturally.”

 

“What’s a bantha?” he asks her.

 

“A flower,” Katooni replies, thinking fast. “Red, with little splotches on it. It’s spicy. People eat it–on,” Kriff, she’s blanking, “Malastare.”

 

Hondo lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, and you were doing so well.”

 

Katooni wants to stick her tongue out at him, but she’s too tired inside to bother. She settles for a glare and a pair of crossed arms.

 

“Oh,” Hondo says, ignoring her completely, “are you trying to be frightening? You’ve got a long way to go, my dear.”

 

Lying is boring, anyway. “Teach me.”

 

Hondo laughs again, teeth flashing white and sharp in the sunlight.

 

Katooni learns to fight with knives. She learns the kill-points of fifty different species, when to stand her ground and when to run. She learns that she was right to flee the troopers when they came for her on Coruscant. This makes her feel worse, somehow. She did the smart thing, but she let Petro be stupid. Dumb kid playing hero. She should have grabbed him by the shoulders and _shaken_ him the first time he talked about being the next Obi-Wan Kenobi. She should have–

 

She learns to fire a blaster. The recoil almost knocks her over the first time, but Hondo kneels next to her and explains the proper protocol, peppering his lesson with jokes and little verbal jabs about her aim. She gets so mad that she hits the target perfectly on the third try, just to prove him wrong.

 

“Now you’re getting the hang of it!” he says gleefully. “Very good.”

 

At some point, Corellian pastries start turning up in the galley. Then sweet blackleaf tea, just like Adi Gallia used to make. Katooni eats them at the table, tears running down her face. Hondo is always mysteriously absent.

 

She learns to pick locks in the engine room, cursing in Weequay and dropping her tools, while Hondo sits on the power generator and sharpens his collection of knives.

 

“I’m getting old over here,” he drawls, as Katooni rattles the locked practice box. “Hurry.”

 

“I’m _trying!_ ” she snarls.

 

“Don’t try,” Hondo tells her. “Do.”

 

 _There is no try_. Katooni’s heart lurches in her chest and she drops another tool.

 

“Work fast! Do you want to go to jail for breaking and entering?” Hondo calls over.

 

She throws her lockpicking instruments on the ground and surges to her feet, heart pounding in her ears.

 

“Maybe I want to go _home!”_

 

Silence except for the churning of the engines. Hondo sighs and hops down from his perch.

 

“Katooni,” he says, very gently for him. “Your home is gone.”

 

She says nothing. There’s really nothing to say.

 

“You do not have to stay here,” he continues, “but you can certainly not go back _there_. You know this.”

 

She closes her eyes, but the tears leak out anyway. His hand settles on her shoulder, squeezing gently. She doesn’t open her eyes, and he doesn’t walk away. They just stand there for a little while, listening to the ship fidget and grumble around them.

 

“Okay,” she says at last, clenching her fists. She raises her chin and meets his gaze. “But you’ve gotta teach me how to make a smoke bomb.”

 

His lips quirk up the smallest amount. “A smoke bomb?”

 

She nods. “They don’t kill anyone, but they help you escape, and they’re–they’re really cool–”

 

She doesn’t care about smoke bombs. He knows this.

 

“Well,” he says magnanimously, “I suppose your lockpicking lessons can wait. A smoke bomb! You know, one of them saved my life on Felucia–”

 

He’s steering her in the direction of the cargo hold, where they store the flash grenades and blasters, hand on her elbow, not once stopping for breath.

 

“–I was eleven standard, in fact. A mere child in a dangerous world, my dear, just like you, but I was clever enough to…”

 

The story is probably at least fifty percent a lie, but Katooni listens anyway, laughing in all the right parts and not asking the obvious questions. This is a lie, but right now the lie is the only thing keeping her from curling into a ball and rocking back and forth, which makes it almost as important as something real.

 

A true story, from a certain point of view.


End file.
